Unable to set preferred domain, can I verify a site that's already redirected?
-
I'm in the process of trying to set a preferred domain in webmaster tools -- to set our www version as preferred vs. the non www. version. IT is already redirecting non-www to www, but I get this message when trying to change settings "Part of the process of setting a preferred domain is to verify that you own http://mnn.com/. Please verify http://mnn.com/."
While we own the domain, I am not sure how we can have Google access a file at [http://mnn.com/some_file when we are forwarding all requests for non-www to our www site.
Note: The apache rewrite predates me and I'm not sure how / why we have two domains set up, but I'm trying to fix the preferred domain now.Am I able to verify the non version once the redirect is in place.Any ideas??? Help???Thanks!Lisa -
Glad you got it taken care of, Aggie.
Now that you've got your answer, could you mark as "Good Answer" whichever answers you found most helpful and mark the overall question as answered? This will help other users who may come across the question in the future.
Thanks!
Paul
<object id="plugin0" style="position: absolute; z-index: 1000;" width="0" height="0" type="application/x-dgnria"><param name="tabId" value="ff-tab-26"> <param name="counter" value="217"></object>
-
Thanks, y'all! I figured it out! Yay! You guys are the best Who knew. I expect things to be SOOOO difficult with Google, this one was way to simple.
Cheers!
Aggie
-
The trick here, Aggie, is that every site you verify through your Webmaster Tools account will give you the same verification file/code to upload to the website. So when you ask Webmaster Tools to create and verify a new site using the non-www version of the domain, it will find the file you uploaded the first time (since as you say - they're the same site!) and will recognize it as your WMT account verification code.
A bit counter-intuitive, but as Irving and Paul say... it just works
~ Another Paul
-
Just enter the non www as a new site and hit verify and it will be accepted, no need to add another verification file, it's the same site and will recognize and accept it.
-
Hey Lisa,
Don't worry about the redirect. Just go to webmaster tools and input the non www version of your site and go through the verification process. Use the same method to verify that you did for the WWW version and you should be able to set the preferred domain after that.
Sincerely,
Paul
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Are provincial third-level domains bad for SEO?
My prospect's domain ends in ".on.ca" (Ontario, Canada). The structure of their site is companyname.on.ca (main page) and all other pages are sub-folders (companyname.on.ca/page-name-1 All pages are no more than two levels deep. I'm wondering if anyone knows if the provincial sub-domain (.on.ca) presents an SEO challenge?
Web Design | | 22Eighteen1 -
Have you changed 100's of links on your site? Tell me the why's, the how's and what's!
Hello there. If you've changed 100's of links, then I'd like for you to contribute to this thread. I've created a new URL structure for a website with 500+ posts in an effort to make it more user friendly, and more accessible to crawlers. I was just about to pull the trigger, when I started reading up on the subject and found that I might have a few surprises waiting for me around the corner. The status of my site. 500 posts 10 different categories 50+ tags No Backlinks No recent hits (according to Google Analytics) No rankings. I'm going to keep roughly 75% of the posts, and put them in different (new) categories to strengthen SEO for the topic which I'd like to rank multiple categories for, and also sorted a list with content which I'd like to 410. Created new structure created new categories Compiled list of old URLs, and new URLs New H1, Meta Title & Descriptions New tags It looks simple on paper, but I've got problems executing it. **Question 1. **What do I need to keep in mind when deleting posts, categories, and tags - besides 410, Google URL removal? Question 2. What do I do with all the old posts that I am going to re-direct? Each post has between 10-15 internal links. I've started manually removing each link in old posts before 301'ing them. The reason I'm doing this is control the UX, as well as internal link juice to strengthen main categories. Am I on the right path? On a side note, I've prepared for the 301'ing by changing the H1's, meta data and adding alt text to images. But I can't help but to think that just deleting the old posts, and copying over the content to the new url (with the original dates set) would be a better alternative. Any contribution to this thread would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Web Design | | Dan-Louis1 -
Redirects Not Working / Issue with Duplicate Page Titles
Hi all We are being penalised on Webmaster Tools and Crawl Diagnostics for duplicate page titles and I'm not sure how to fix it.We recently switched from HTTP to HTTPS, but when we first switched over, we accidentally set a permanent redirect from HTTPS to HTTP for a week or so(!).We now have a permanent redirect going the other way, HTTP to HTTPS, and we also have canonical tags in place to redirect to HTTPS.Unfortunately, it seems that because of this short time with the permanent redirect the wrong way round, Google is confused as sees our http and https sites as duplicate content.Is there any way to get Google to recognise this new (correct) permanent redirect and completely forget the old (incorrect) one?Any ideas welcome!
Web Design | | HireSpace0 -
Does google prefer expanded text to text that you have to mouse over to show?
Does a long scrolling page of text perform better than a page that has the content in sections that have to be moused over to be seen? Are there any articles or research on this?
Web Design | | SirSud0 -
How can I reduce my warnings for excesive links on our site?
Our campaign overview shows well over 100 warnings that could be hurting our google ranking based on excessive links on pages. Each page listed, however, is simply due to listing the brands we carry, and linking to the products. Is there a way to do this without hurting our ranking? A better way than linking, perhaps? Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | guycochran0 -
Infinite Scrolling vs. Pagination on an eCommerce Site
My company is looking at replacing our ecommerce site's paginated browsing with a Javascript infinite scroll function for when customers view internal search results--and possibly when they browse product categories also. Because our internal linking structure isn't very robust, I'm concerned that removing the pagination will make it harder to get the individual product pages to rank in the SERPs. We have over 5,000 products, and most of them are internally linked to from the browsing results pages in the category structure: e.g. Blue Widgets, Widgets Under $250, etc. I'm not too worried about removing pagination from the internal search results pages, but I'm concerned that doing the same for these category pages will result in de-linking the thousands of product pages that show up later in the browsing results and therefore won't be crawlable as internal links by the Googlebot. Does anyone have any ideas on what to do here? I'm already arguing against the infinite scroll, but we're a fairly design-driven company and any ammunition or alternatives would really help. For example, would serving a different page to the Googlebot in this case be a dangerous form of cloaking? (If the only difference is the presence of the pagination links.) Or is there any way to make rel=next and rel=prev tags work with infinite scrolling?
Web Design | | DownPour0 -
Is there a limit for 301 redirection in htaccess file?
For the SEO perspective, there is a limit for the number of 301 redirection inside the htaccess file?
Web Design | | Naghirniac0 -
Parked Domain or Redirect
Should I park a domain or Redirect? And what is the best way? I need to switch our domain name. I currently have all of our domains redirecting to our main website. I have set up there own hosting in our cpanel account so I could redirect them to our main domain. Was this too many steps? I tried putting all of our domains in our main domains, .htaccess file, and redirected them to our main website, but they did not work. So that is why I set up there own cpanel accounts. Now they work fine. However, my hosting company told me that I could just park the domain on our current domains account. If I can redirect all of these domain in one place, that would be great. I thought that a parked domain is considered duplicate websites, as both urls work, displaying the entire website with both urls. So Would I have to re upload our entire website to the account that I want as our main domain? Or is there another way of going about doing this?
Web Design | | hfranz0